Put pub food to the test at some of the city’s best boozers

Bars

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Pub food festival

It takes more than a cask of ale and a beginner’s class in pouring a pint (which, unlike Brazilian beers, should have no more than a finger’s width of head) to call a bar a pub. Old-school British boozers have frosted windows, sticky tables, pork scratchings and a friendly landlord or -lady behind the bar, although these fine institutions have become something of a dying breed in the last two decades, losing ground in the UK to blander pub chains and upmarket gastropubs.

São Paulo’s pubs – a motley crew of bars packed with varying quantities of cliché – are joining the gastropub trend, it seems, with the city’s second Pub Food Festival. Ten establishments will each be putting three dishes to a jury test in a bid to win the Best Pub Food crown.

The menus cover everything from dishes that shouldn’t be seen within a half-mile radius of any self-respecting pub, to British classics like fish and chips (R$21), served at the Queen’s Head, a windowless pub inside the Brazilian British Centre.

The Irish-themed live-music joint Dublin will serve pork rib hamburgers (R$25) and lamb hotdogs (R$29), while the recently opened rock-themed pub Cão Véio will serve a delicious-sounding dish of pork ribs marinated in cachaça and molasses with chipotle chile and passionfruit. With the chef of Sal Gastronomia amongst the bar's owners, Cão Véio is a good gourmet bet, though falls short of having the atmosphere of a traditional pub.